Longsuffering

Message Transcription

Amen, we're in week four of our series Imperfect Disciples, as we've been thinking about the different qualities of a disciple and trying to pursue them as best we can. We began in week one talking about how an imperfect disciple is slow looking at the story of Mary and Martha in Luke, Chapter ten will actually encounter Mary and Martha again this morning. But in that story of learning to slow down, to not try to do too much, too much for God that our relationship with God can't really sustain. You know, we recognize that the most important thing that happens in our life is not all the stuff that we do, but it's the person that we become. And so pursuing these qualities, this type of life is really significant. So we want to be the kind of people who slow down, who learn to slow down and follow the way of Jesus. In week two, we talked about being intentional, about rejecting the way of the world, this pursuit of success and greatness, and instead finding our way back to Jesus and saying we want to we want to pursue his way of life, his way of being in the world, rejecting the world and embracing the way of Christ. Last week we talked about how disciples are limited, that God has placed each and every one of us in a time, in a place, in a body, in a season of life. And with those come limits. And so our desire as disciples is to discern those limits.

Is this something that God's inviting me to accept, to be willing to embrace, to surrender to? Or is this a limit that God's challenging me to break through, to think about how can we achieve? How can we use what God has given to us to go beyond maybe what a circumstance is that we face in our life today? We're going to look at long suffering a disciple who is long suffering. One of the ways that God matures us is by long suffering. Now, this sermon is especially meaningful to me and a personal to me as our family has navigated the road of grief this last year together and thinking about the impact of loss on one another's lives. You know, everyone experiences loss. They may not always be the same. They may not always come in the same ways and the same shape and form. But we all experience loss. Sometimes they're really small, sometimes they're really big. We'll talk about a few different ones here in just a minute. But as Jesus own brother, James would tell the young church that he was ministering to, he'd say, Consider it pure joy. My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. James doesn't say Consider it pure joy if this happens. He says. Consider it pure joy when this happens, when suffering comes, when trials happen because we all face them, no one gets to escape trials. Sometimes we deal with physical pain and grief and loss.

I share with you some last week about my Achilles tendinitis, and I had several of you come up and commiserate with me about those physical pains that we all must endure. A lot of times we deal with emotional pain, with grief and loss that comes over the collection of years of different things that we face. I've been so thankful for Pete Sakaziro and his book Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, as he challenges us to consider how we can't be spiritually mature if we're not emotionally sure that we've got to learn how to face the realities of of our life. Those those not only those limits, but those griefs and those losses that we suffer. He puts to name a few different kinds of losses. And the the first one is devastating loss. This may be the death of a significant other, something like my dad experienced this last year, some of which many of you have experienced, someone you really deeply shared life with, and now they're not a part of your life anymore. Or at least not in the way they had been. Sometimes it comes as a result of abuse or neglect, right? This crippling experience that you went through as a young person or maybe even an older person, sometimes it can come through a diagnosis of some disease, some health challenge that you can't deal with on your own. And it may be something that that no one can deal with this side of heaven.

As sometimes those losses may be a betrayal, someone you thought would never do to you what this person has done to you. And it just is devastating. Sometimes losses come in the form of just unexpected things happening in our life, in our world. Those natural disasters. Right. Tornado or flood, things like that, maybe a terrorist attack. We experience the grief and loss. Some of us have special ties to what happened in New York on nine over 11. Right. We knew people who were there. We knew people directly affected by that. These unexpected losses that just kind of come out of nowhere. And all of us lived through the Covid 19 pandemic. Right. Unexpected. We weren't expecting life to change as much as it changed in just a few short months. And yet it did. Right. There are unexpected losses, but then there are also expected losses, things that come just as a natural stage in life, things that just happen. For example, a number of our young people are going to experience graduation this year. That's a change, but it's also a loss of this familiarity. I kind of knew my position. I knew my role. I knew the the boundaries of my life. And now I'm headed out into a different world. I may be heading off to college or a trade school or I'm going into the workplace, the marketplace, and things will be different. We experience that loss and some of that grief.

Sometimes we move a house, a neighborhood, a job. With those come a different type of loss. But it's it's certainly a loss nonetheless. There are different stages we go through in our own lives as we raise up kiddos and launch them into the world, as Kaylee and I did a couple of years ago with Gabe. And we will this next year with Hallie. What comes with it is joy and excitement for them as they go into the world. But there's also this loss of the way things used to be as we navigate different stages of our life, we experience different levels of loss and some of us hit. They hit us harder than others, and that's okay. That doesn't mean they're any less meaningful. That mean there are any less difficult to process through? Sometimes we see loss in churches, right? And we've experienced that here at Broadway of of folks who used to be here. One of the most common things when I meet new people in Lubbock that that used to just drive me crazy because they'd say, oh, Broadway, I used to go there. Well, don't you still go there? You know, we experienced a change in leadership. We experienced change in different circumstances. We experienced those as loss loss. Sometimes it's in relationships, right? Relationships change when you're in high school and you had these best friends. We're always going to be friends forever. Bff Somebody give me a shout out over here. Right. And then we move away or they move away and see, my BFFs did not show up at church today.

That's a loss I'm experiencing right now in front of people. But all of these might be considered small things, maybe. Sometimes we experience them more deeply than others, but they're all unique and they're all losses. How do we deal with that? How do we manage that? What does that look like in the life of a disciple? Because we all experience emotional pain and loss, Sakaziro says that learning to process grief and loss is actually one of the foundational principles, one of the one of the hardest things, but one of the most important works of a disciple to learn how to navigate challenging circumstances in life because we all face them. He says it exposes, number one, a couple of challenges that the church have in dealing with grief and losses. It's this reminder that we're not in control. And I don't know about you, but I don't like to be reminded of that. I like to have some sense of it, even if it's just an illusion that there is some control in my life. And when grief and loss comes knocking on our door, it reminds us we are not in control. How do we handle that? How do we deal with that? We often try to develop these coping strategies. We pursue other things. We get busy. We look for opportunities to just distract ourselves. But you and I both know any time we've tried to pursue that way of dealing with loss, it never satisfies.

It may keep us busy for a little while, but it ultimately doesn't lead us to where we want to go to. The other thing exposes us. We often see grief and loss as an interruption to our lives. An obstacle to discipleship. How many of you ever felt that a loss inside? And you just wonder why. I just need to get over this. I just need to get beyond this. I just need to move on. Maybe someone's giving you that advice. Just get over it. How well does that work for us? And church. It often that discomfort of dealing with grief, grief and loss comes through the glib sharing of a verse with someone thinking this is meant to be helpful, and yet it just sounds hollow and it rings empty. In church, it can often be hard to deal with grief and loss. But we too often forget about all the ways in Scripture that we see the church and people in the church dealing with grief and loss. Just survey through your Old Testament. You read all kinds of laments and longings where people were dealing with really hard things, and instead of just keeping them bottled up, they would express them to God and to one another. In fact, they were so powerful that at some point a group of followers gathered together and said, We need to keep hold of these record of these and share these with the next generation of faith, because they're so powerful in helping us learn how to navigate grief and loss in our life because it's a part of this world, this side of heaven.

Score zero points, two, three phases in which the Bible actually instructs us and gives us some insight on how to deal with grief and loss. Some of you may be familiar with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief as Jesus points us to scripture and says, Actually, there's there's at least three that we can find in Scripture. I want to share those with you this morning as we think some about our story today in John 11 of how do we deal with things grief, loss, pain hurts. Especially when we're not sure what to do with them. The first phase that's Gazera points us to. He says we've got to learn how to pay attention to the pain. Now, this one sounds fairly obvious, but if you're wired in any way, shape or form like me, this is not one of my favorite stages. I actually don't like this one very much. But as I noted before, if you survey the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, you'll see time and time again people of God who pay attention to the pain and cry out, express it. See, when a loss enters into our life, we often feel annoyed or we get angry at God for this invasion into our normal, everyday lives.

Again, we forget about the examples. I think that was part of what was happening here in John chapter 11. We see Jesus recognizing the pain and the loss that his friends are going through. John tells us a setup as the story opens that Jesus receives word, He's with his disciples, that his friend Lazarus, who is Mary and Martha's brother, has died. Now we know that as reading it along. But Jesus actually stays where he is a couple of more days. It's kind of an interesting setup to the story. By the time we get down to verse 32. Jesus is willing to enter the pain and the loss that has entered his life through the loss of his friend Lazarus. And it entered his friends lives. Mary and Martha in verse 32. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here. My brother would not have died. And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. Where have you laid him? He asked. Come and see, Lord, they replied. And Jesus wept. And you have so strongly that the people around watching him said see how he loved him. I remember Jesus knows what is happening. John has already given us that clue at the beginning of the chapter. He knows, in fact, he's told his disciples this story is not going to end in death.

And yet here we see Jesus weeping to the point that the people around him understood this wasn't just deer. But a literal just weeping at the loss and the pain that those around him were going through. You see Jesus early on, said Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going to go wake him up. See, Jesus understood that Lazarus had died and he understood the power that God was going to move and work in and through him. And yet still here, in the midst of grief and loss that his friends are experiencing, Jesus pays attention to the pain. When Jesus saw their weeping. And the Jews who had come along with them also weeping. He was deeply moved in spirit. This actually isn't the only time that we find Jesus deeply moved by the world going on around him and by the people who are being impacted by it. You may remember over in Matthew chapter nine that Jesus has been going through all the towns and villages, verse 35, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God and healing every disease and sickness. And when he saw the crowds. He had compassion. At that same idea. That same phrase is deeply moved because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. A little bit later on, a couple of chapters later in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus learns of his cousin's murder by King Herod.

And so we're told this. When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. And Jesus had to get away to to experience, to pay attention to the pain in his own life. His cousin, whom he loved and cared for deeply, had just been murdered. And the people hear about it. And so they keep following after Jesus. And when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd. Once again, he was moved. He was moved deeply. He had compassion. He begun began to heal them. See Jesus understood the significance of paying attention to the pain. So you see him withdraw and take some time alone, and then you see him lean into community to gather around and to spend time with those who are dealing with his pain. We see most poignantly where Jesus was willing to experience the pain, to pay attention to the pain when he's hanging on the cross and those around him dip a sponge into the wine vinegar and say, Jesus, take this, drink it. It'll numb the pain, it'll take the edge off. And Jesus says, no. No. I'm not going to be distracted. I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to I'm going to stay in the moment. I'm not going to avoid it. You see, our temptation my temptation is to want to avoid the pain that's going on, to experience the grief and the loss whenever it arrives on my doorstep. I want to deny it. I want to distract myself from feeling it.

But Jesus leans into it. He learns to feel it, and in doing so, he learns to experience God's mercy. In the last year, I've had to learn how to lean into and experience the pain. I can promise you this is not what I wanted to do. It's not what I was hoping for. In fact, what I began to see was I wasn't equipped to do it in the ways that I thought I was. I'm a grown man. I'm a man. I'm 40. Some of you may know what that means. And I have a license in marriage and family therapy. And I work with couples and individuals all the time helping counsel them and move them through the process and the stages of grief. I thought I knew how to get through the stages, right. What I encountered was I didn't. I didn't want to pay attention to that pain. I can pay attention to. Your pain isn't any of my pain. But what about when it's your pain? What about when it's my pain? And I learned I had to take some time away to go to a solitary place. My therapist, my counselor was like, All right, you're going to have to deal with this, because if not, it's going to deal with you. And I had to learn to put some names to the stuff that I was feeling and the pain that I was experiencing. And then I had to gather around with other people who were going through pain and say, Man, we're in this together, right? Yeah, we're in this together.

And leaning into community, learning how to pay attention to it. Because if not, then I just continue to distract myself. I notice how the people responded to Jesus weeping. See how he loved him. I Jesus gift of of leaning into and paying attention to that pain that was not only expressing his own desire, the stuff that he was going through, but it also communicated this gift of comfort and mercy. We pay attention to the pain. I've told you 100 times how precious my wife is to me because she does this with me. And she's willing to wander into that pain with me. And I receive it as a gift. See, when we're willing to pay attention to the pain, what might God do? How might he bring comfort into our lives, into the lives of someone that you care about? Paying attention to the pain is so important because often and as Kazuhiro says, these phases, it's not like they're sequential. One, two, three. Sometimes it's one and then three and then two. And then three. And then one. And then two. And then one. And then three. Like they just. They just kind of happen. He says. We learned to pay attention to the pain. What we what we find ourself often is in that is in phase two, which is maybe the one of the more troubling and challenging phases.

It's waiting in the confusion in between. A theologically, we think about this as the already not yet right that we know Jesus died and was raised again. And because of that we have life with him into eternity. That is true. It happened. And it's also happening. That kingdom is continuing to break through, but it hasn't fully come yet. So we live in this moment, this in-between. And so scripture invites us to to learn how to live into this confusing in-between. Because when grief and loss and pain show up in our life on our doorstep, what we often find. As we have to stop. We have to wait. I don't know about you. I don't like waiting. Maybe one of the more important lessons we learn about dealing with grief and loss is learning how to wait. Is grief and loss are so annoying. Oh. I just sabotaged my plans. I wasn't expecting to have to deal with you today. Grief and loss. I had stuff to do. And yet. Here I am. Again, there are examples all through scripture of people who had to wait. They were given a promise and yet they had to wait. We think of Abraham and Sarah. Who were one day promised, You're going to have a kiddo. But one right then. Or we think of Moses who's out in the wilderness, had to wait 40 years for God to call him into this incredible moment in time and say, I need you to do something for me.

Oh, and by the way, it's going to take at least another 40 years. They had to wait. We see the stories of Jobe and Hannah and Elizabeth, even the apostles, the disciples in this story, having to learn how to wait. If you find yourself having to wait, if you find yourself in phase two this confusing in-between time, I want to tell you, church, you're in good company. In really good company. Often confusion comes because we aren't sure where God is. And we aren't sure what or if he's doing anything. Look back at John 11 when Jesus finds out about out about his his friend Lazarus. He stays where he is two more days before he goes back. Now, why is that? What's going on? Even his disciples are a little confused when Jesus finally says, okay, guys, we're going to go pick up in verse seven, Let's go back to Judea, he says. But Rabbi, a short while ago there the Jews there tried to stone you and you're going to go back like, what are we? Why are we going back now? And so Jesus explains. And he says after he said this, he went on to tell them, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up. And his disciples say, Lord, never wake a sleeping baby. If he's sleeping, let him sleep. Mary in Martha and her friends also experienced a lot of confusion.

We hear that in their statements. Lord, if you had been here, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Even those who were mourning, along with Mary and Martha, kind of stepped back after they see Jesus weeping and they're going, Wait a second. Isn't this the guy who healed the blind man? I mean, couldn't he have kept this guy from dying? What is going on? You see, it's in the confusing in-between times that Sakaziro says, God often uproots our self-will. He strips us of layers of our false self and he frees us from unhealthy attachments. It's in these in-between seasons that we are emptied and this emptying has one primary purpose. Is to make room for something new or better. See the opportunity in the midst of grief and loss. In this waiting and learning to wait on God rather than just to keep getting busy and to keep filling our schedules and filling our minds with other things. It confronts us with this lack of control. And keeping us from trying to hold everything together on our own. It's also a reminder to us why the power of the Holy Spirit is so significant in the life of a believer. You know, Jesus promised to his disciples, and he says, I'm going away. He says, You're not alone. I'm going to be with you. I'm going to be present with you. In fact, the Holy Spirit's going to counsel you.

He's going to teach you. He's going to speak to you. He's going to guide you and lead you. Don't forget that. See in these confusing in-between times, it's our opportunity to learn how to be more reliant on God's spirit. Because that spirit keeps leading us, Guerrero says to that third phase where it's allowing the old to birth the new. Now. Church We talk about this every week. In fact, Ali did a great job of it this morning at the central promise and belief of us as followers of Jesus. Is that he died on our behalf. But not just that he died, but he was raised to life. And because of that, now there is opportunity for us to experience what true life was intended from the beginning. And it doesn't just happen one day when we die. It actually begins here and now and it continues on. This is what allows us. To learn how to see our griefs and our sorrows in a different light. Now, Paul would say we don't grieve like those who have no hope. See, Jesus understood, and so did Paul in the early church. The early writers of Scripture said that endings aren't really endings. They're gateways to new beginnings. I didn't mean our losses aren't real, that we don't experience the pain and the suffering. That come with with with hurts and griefs. But what's more real than that is the resurrection. That Jesus really did rise from that tomb.

That that tomb is empty. That there is a hope and that hope has a name. And God invites us to trust Him with the many small deaths that we experience all throughout our lives. That's what he says to Martha. Remember her words. Lord, Lord, if you had just been here, my brother wouldn't have died. But I know that even now. Anything you say. That'll do it. Jesus said. Martha, your brother is going to rise again. I know, Lord. I know. I know. He'll rise again at the resurrection. Right? I don't know about you. But those have been my words right for a while now. For about a year. I know. I know. Mom's going to rise again. I know. I know. I know. Shall rise again at the resurrection. That sentiment is very familiar to me and maybe to some of you. All right. Martha knows. I know. I'm just not sure I know. And Jesus. As he often did. He says, I am the resurrection. I am the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe that? That's what we're talking about, Martha. Martha says, I believe you're the Messiah. And I believe if anyone can make it happen, you can make it happen. You are the son of God who's coming to the world. Is he. Jesus would go on to tell his disciples in the very next chapter when he's talking to them about his own death.

He says, Very truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies. But if it dies, something amazing is going to happen. Resurrection is going to happen. See the certainty. This certainty of God's promise is what allows us to navigate that uncertain in-between time, that confusing in-between time. So. Church Let me ask you. Where are you these days? With grief and loss? Where is God knocking on your door, inviting you to step back into this pathway of discipleship? Because so often grief and loss are one of the things that sidetrack us from our pursuit of God. It certainly has been the case for me. And maybe it has been for you, too. Perhaps God's inviting us this morning to say. Would you keep holding on? Would you keep trusting? Would you keep believing again? Friends, This is one of the powers of the gift of the church in our lives is is we get to help each other, keep on keeping on. We get to help each other, keep believing and keep holding on to this hope. Because there are days where I come and I'm not sure I believe it. I mean, I believe it, but I'm not sure I believe it. Until someone puts an arm around me and says, Man, I love you. I've been praying for you. Let's go grab some lunch.

I've been thinking about you. Let me tell you this amazing thing God's doing right now. I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I believe he's the Messiah, the one who's coming to the world. And sometimes I get to do that for some of you. But see, the power of life and community together is that we don't have to walk it alone. We don't have to go alone. We don't have to suffer alone. Instead we get to do that together. So, Church As we leave here today, I just invite you to take one of these with you. They just ask God, would you help me, Lord, to pay attention to the pain that's going on in my life? Lord, help me to to come into contact with a trusted friend or a counselor who can help me put words to the things that I've been going through, because so often I just deny them or I distract myself from experiencing them and they're leading me to make all kinds of decisions and to say the kinds of things that don't really reflect who we are. And if you don't believe that's happening, just take a look at the news, right? Just watch the election cycle this next year and just ask yourself, does that sound like the kind of comments from somebody who is solid and secure in their belief that Jesus has died and is raised from the dead and he is coming again? Or does it sound like fear?

And terror.

Right. Maybe God's inviting us to say, Lord, help us to pay attention to the pain. So when we encounter someone and we hear their pain, we don't just stop and say, Well, you're an idiot and you're wrong for thinking we can say. Tell me about your story. Maybe for some of us, it's that confusing in-between time. So how can I be a person of peace to someone who I see is really struggling, is really going through something? How can I be present and available in the pain? Paying attention to their pain. Offering hope. Not just contrived verses, pulled out of context and shoved in their face to make them be quiet because it's making me uncomfortable when you talk about that stuff. But say, how can I wander with someone in the confusing in-between? Or is it? How can I allow the old to birth the new? How can I hold on to that promise that the tomb is empty? And that every death in the kingdom of God leads to life. In fact, Jesus promises for those of us who believe we'll never die. It's a gateway to the next stage. And so we hold on to that Hope Church. Where can God challenge how can we help you in that? Just a moment. Wendy and the team are going to come and lead us in our closing song. I want to invite you Don't leave here today. Don't leave her today. If you feel the Lord, the Holy Spirit tugging on your heart, wanting you to get real about what's going on in your life, we'd love to talk with you. We'd love to pray with you. I can tell you that we probably won't have the answer you're looking for, but we know the one who does. And we would love to make an introduction. So church if there's any way that we can help you take your next step on the journey of faith, why don't you come as we all stand together and sing?